Administration officials, Israeli officials and Senate Republicans are standing behind the Trump administration’s recent series of strikes on the Houthis following reports suggesting that the strikes are failing to significantly affect the terror group’s capabilities.

CNN reported that individuals briefed on the strikes see them as having largely failed to make a significant dent in the Houthis’ capabilities or kill senior-level officials, even as significant resources have been expended, reportedly approaching $1 billion. In an indication of their continued capabilities in spite of the U.S. onslaught, the Houthis have reportedly downed two U.S. drones since the beginning of the American campaign.

Administration officials said on Monday they were confident that the strikes are working.

President Donald Trump said in Oval Office comments alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday that the strikes on the Houthis had been “very successful militarily. We’ve damaged them very badly,” including eliminating some of their key missile designers.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said it had been a “devastating campaign” that had eliminated the Houthis’ weapons facilities, troops, air defenses and other assets, and said, “We are not going to relent.”

A diplomatic source on Netanyahu’s delegation to Washington said that “the Americans are doing a good job” striking the Houthis.

“We don’t want to get in their way,” the source said.

Senate Republicans agreed that the strikes should continue as needed until the Houthis are degraded.

“Unfortunately, Iran continues to support Hezbollah, the Houthis, Hamas, and so I think we all have to do what we can to destroy them, and unfortunately it takes money,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) told Jewish Insider, suggesting he’s open to seeing the campaign continue until the Houthis are destroyed. “I want to destroy every terrorist in the world.”

Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) said that critics of the strikes are “wrong.”

“The Houthis are the last surrogate for Iran that has any muscle. Hezbollah, Hamas have been gutted like a fish, and I think we ought to gut the Houthis like a fish as long as they continue to fire on American and other ships. I don’t see who can be opposed to that, unless you love Iran,” Kennedy continued. 

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) said that while she had yet to be briefed on the latest operations, she stood by the Trump administration’s decision to strike the group. 

“I hope to get a briefing to get more information on that,” Collins told JI. “I do think striking the Houthis was the right thing to do given their impact on the shipping lanes, but also on our sailors.”

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) suggested that the CNN reporting may not be accurate.

“I’m not sure where the billion dollar number came from, and I’m not sure where the suggestion that they didn’t have any effect comes from,” Rounds said. “So I’m going to challenge you on the premise of your question.”

On the Democratic side, opinions are somewhat more split.

Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) said he believes the majority of the costs for the campaign are coming from interceptors and other capabilities needed to stop Houthi attacks and protect U.S. ships.

“Ultimately you’ve got to make decisions about where you want to put your resources. And we, on these weapons, we do not have unlimited magazines,” Kelly said. But he argued that given the U.S.’ large stockpiles and the relatively low cost of munitions, the U.S. can continue bombing runs “for a long period of time.”

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) said that “the notion of trying to take steps to eliminate [the Houthis’] capacity is a good thing” but argued that “the only thing that’s worked” to stop their attacks has been a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

“One of the operational challenges we’ve had is we don’t have all the human intelligence, signals intelligence in Yemen to give us the absolute best places to take it to them, but the one thing we know that works is a ceasefire,” Kaine reiterated. “That doesn’t mean it would work a year from now, but so far, the ceasefire works.”

Kaine said he’s open to discussions of providing support to Yemeni government forces to launch a ground campaign against the Houthis but was skeptical they alone would have the capacity, suggesting that other U.S. partners would have to be involved, which could be a “challenging discussion.”

Jonathan Schanzer, the executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told JI that by some metrics, the Houthi strikes are having an impact. He said that Israeli officials he visited with last week had “nothing but glowing praise for the campaign” and that it was successfully damaging the terrorist group.

“Now whether that’s enough to do permanent damage to the Houthis is another story, and I would say that this is a continuing problem,” Schanzer said. He noted that the strikes have reportedly forced Iran to withdraw its personnel from Yemen and that the pace of ballistic missile attacks has decreased.

Michael Knights, a senior fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that there are multiple ways to assess the success of the U.S. air campaign. Coercing the Houthi leadership into backing down is a much more difficult goal, Knights said, and would require “a far higher level of physical threat to their leadership.” 

But he said the campaign does seem to have had some success in reducing the Houthis’ armaments and weapons production capacity, eliminating some personnel and destroying equipment. Sustaining those gains, Knights added, requires effective interdiction of supplies from Iran, which the U.S. had been failing to do earlier in the year.

“The only thing that really does bring the Houthis to the negotiating table is when you threaten them with the loss of terrain, and particularly access to the Red Sea coastline,” Knights said. “If you actually want to change the Houthis’ decision-making, the best way to do that is to demonstrate that you’re assisting Yemeni armed forces to become more capable and then actually perhaps destroying Houthi targets on the front lines where the Yemenis are attacking.”

Schanzer and Knights both agreed that on-the-ground military action to take Houthi territory will be necessary to fully incapacitate and defeat the group. They said the U.S. will have to directly or indirectly provide support for the internationally recognized Yemeni government forces to go after the Houthis on the ground.

“The U.S. is going to have to invest, whether it’s the [government-aligned Southern Transitional Council] or other forces, maybe it’s special forces on the ground — Western forces or Arab forces — something is going to be needed here,” Schanzer said. “Air power is never enough. Air power must be coupled with other means to bring down the enemy.”

Schanzer said the STC will need ammunition, funding and training from the U.S., while Knights added that U.S. military advisors would likely need to be embedded with the anti-Houthi forces — ”boots on the ground.” Both said the efforts would be comparable to U.S. support for Afghan mujahideen fighting against the Taliban in the early 2000s.

Both the Biden and Trump administrations undertook significant efforts to press the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia to end their military campaigns against the Houthis inside Yemen. The approach of re-involving those allies, which Schanzer and Knights supported, would effectively mark a reversal of that policy.

“Events since November 2023 have obviously cast an interesting light on that decision to stop our partners from removing the Houthis from the Red Sea coast, just as they’d almost succeeded in 2018,” Knights said. “That now seems extraordinarily short-sighted.”

Jewish Insider senior political correspondent Lahav Harkov contributed to this report.